Opposition grows for Stigmatine land buy

Tuesday

Dec 20, 2016 at 3:56 PMDec 27, 2016 at 2:36 PM

Ignacio Laguarda ilaguarda@wickedlocal.com @ilaguarda

Editor's note: A previous version of this story indicated that Father Bob Masciocchi, the director of the espousal center on the Stigmatine Fathers & Brothers site, was interested in selling the land. While he is, in fact, interested in selling the land, Masciocchi wants to preserve 16 of the 46 acres, instead of selling the entire lot.

As city officials prepare to buy the Stigmatine Fathers & Brothers site on Lexington Street, they face growing opposition from a handful of local residents, as well as top Catholic Church officials in Rome.

Local Catholic Church officials have shown an interest in selling the land, but many in the community have expressed outrage over the city’s intention of taking the land through eminent domain if necessary.

To complicate matters, the Superior General of the Stigmatine Congregation in Rome wants to retain part of the roughly 46-acre piece of land, as does Father Bob Masciocchi, the director of the espousal center on the site.

Father Maurizio Baldessari, in an emailed statement, stated he and the other major superiors of the congregation decided to keep part of the land in order to “continue the very important ministry of retreats, family formation and counseling and prayer courses of the Espousal Center.”

“We are sorry that the Mayor of Waltham has threatened to invoke the right of eminent domain to take the whole property,” he wrote.

Buying the land

The Waltham City Council recently approved a loan order for $18 million submitted by Mayor Jeannette McCarthy to buy the Stigmatine site.

The reasoning behind the dollar figure is unclear, since the entire 46-acre site is assessed at $22.7 million, according to Joseph Goode, chairman of the city's Board of Assessors. If the city were to buy the lot through eminent domain, however, it would have to pay the market value, or the appraised value, of the land.

The appraised value amount was disclosed last week to Waltham city councilors in an executive session meeting, which are held behind closed doors. Councilors Diane LeBlanc and Gary Marchese were reached for comment about the amount, but did not disclose the figure.

Marchese, the council president, said he is generally opposed to taking land through eminent domain, unless there is a “compelling public purpose,” though he did not specify where he stands on acquiring Stigmatine through such a tactic.

Councilor Robert Waddick was the only councilor to vote against the loan order.

He said he is not opposed to acquiring the lot, but was not ready to make such a decision last week, saying there were “too many unresolved issues.”

“There seems to be pressure to get this property to make it at least available as an option for the high school,” he said. “I wasn’t prepared to move the process along this aggressively.”

Opposing viewpoints

Stigmatine retreat regular Evelyn Reilly is part of the opposition to the city’s plans.

Reilly has been a member of the retreat center for 40 years, and is opposed to the city buying the land through eminent domain.

“This is going to affect us profoundly and we don’t have any way to figure out what’s going on,” she said.

The process of getting the site could be completed as soon as next week or next month, said McCarthy, or it could drag on for as long as three years if the owners fight the purchase and the matter goes into litigation.

Some, such as state Rep. Tom Stanley, take issue with city's process so far. Stanley, a former Waltham city councilor, said the process has been “harmful to taxpayers and our students.”

“The city is forcing the decision to buy land that’s not for sale for which we don’t know how much it would cost to construct a school on site,” he said. “It seems ludicrous to me.”

He added, “Once again, the city is being marched down a road to make decisions with little information.”

Stanley has been critical of the mayor and city's handling of the new high school, since the idea of upgrading the science labs at the current high school came up 13 years ago, and yet, the issue remains unresolved. He sees the latest push to acquire Stigmatine as adding yet another delay to the process of improving the school.

"It's taken so long to improve the educational facilities," he said. "It's just unbelievable."

How'd we get here?

The idea of building a new high school on the Stigmatine site was first brought up last year, but seemed to be taken off the table once the ad-hoc School Building Committee discovered a perennial stream on the land that would have prevented construction.

The same committee was later informed that the stream was not perennial, which seemingly put the land back in play, until the same committee took a vote on where they’d like to build the school, and they chose the current high school location at 617 Lexington St.

However, The Waltham School Committee went against the vote of the School Building Committee and voted unanimously on Wednesday, Dec. 7, to select the Stigmatine site as their preferred location for a new high school.

The committee took an unannounced and unplanned vote on Dec. 7 after Mayor Jeannette McCarthy, who supports the Stigmatine site over the other options, suggested they do so in order to give the city council a clear directive moving forward.

The School Committee decided on Stigmatine mostly because members didn’t want to pass up the opportunity, though the option of building on the current school site at 617 Lexington St., which the building committee suggested, would act as a fallback option.

Committee members prefer the Stigmatine site to the current high school because it offers more land, and would allow the district to achieve its master plan goal of building a campus, while also achieving their educational plan within the walls of the school. The new high school would be able to house 1,830 students. The population of the existing high school is 1,600 students.

The current high school site would be sufficient to achieve the district’s educational plan but the constricted site would not be big enough to allow for the full master plan goals to be realized.

Further, building at the current school location would be much more disruptive to students that constructing a school off-site - another reason the committee favored the Stigmatine site.

McCarthy has openly stated that some of the motivation behind building a school at the Stigmatine site is to stop a potential large housing development there.